


Fear

by Jade_Waters



Category: Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Gen, Psychopathology & Sociopathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-15
Updated: 2013-05-15
Packaged: 2017-12-11 22:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/803826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Waters/pseuds/Jade_Waters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rampage contemplates fear while scanning a desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fear

Fear.

I understand that organic lifeforms have a similar response, only theirs is caused by chemical compounds - adrenaline - instead of electrical impulses. Theirs is bitter.

*

Desert   
Less than 25 centimeters of precipitation per solar revolution.  
Scans detect extensive mechanical weathering, sparse vegetation.  
Nowhere to run. Only box canyons in which to hide.

*

The response is caused by a threat, by being reduced to prey, to being hunted. Fight or flight is triggered deep within the core processor, senses are heightened, hard drives start running through various scenarios, increasingly improbable.

But that is not the height of fear, only the beginning. True fear, the kind my spark feeds on, comes from the unknown, the predator you cannot see, cannot fight, and cannot escape. Fear becomes panic. The bot transcends logic. The processors speed up in their imaginings until they start glitching. Sensors detect things that aren’t there, limbs start shaking and shivering instead of running or fighting. A bot can’t move, can’t think, glitches into inaction, frozen.

*

Overland water flow is important to this ecosystem, but 99% ephemeral, primarily flash floods. Fleeting.  
How unpredictable. Death thwarted by a chance thunder storm, but not entirely cheated.  
The floods claim their own victims.

*

This - this is the fear I seek, energy crackling at random, sweet and strong like oil. So overwhelming, intoxicating as it ripples off my victims. Their sparks cry out for another, but only my own twisted, hungry spark answers.

*

Saline - dry salt lake bed  
Playa - dry lake bed  
Clay pan - dry clay lake bed  
All dry, of course. Parched.   
Every being in this desert is ready to soak up the tiniest drop of water, even molecules from the air.   
This land and I - we are both ravenous.

*

If they knew how beautiful it is - if they knew how completely this fear fills my spark like rain in the desert - maybe they would not judge me. Maybe they would understand what they created.

But then, they would not fear me.


End file.
